For Tim Hudak, this was the end of the easy part. But he certainly ended it in style.
Mr. Hudak has had two key objectives in the eight months since he took over the leadership of Ontario's Progressive Conservatives. He needed, first and foremost, to energize a Conservative base that hasn't had much to celebrate since the Mike Harris era. And to those outside the party paying attention, including journalists who will tell the story of next year's election, he wanted to show that the Tories are ready to compete with a Liberal machine that's steamrolled them in the past two provincial campaigns.
The Conservatives' convention in Ottawa this weekend was the culmination of those efforts, and Mr. Hudak's chance to showcase his progress. It was hard not to be impressed.
For the first time in recent memory, provincial Tories visibly had fun. Rubber-chicken dinners were replaced with martini lounges. Indie rock blared. Hospitality suites boomed. Even the hammiest segment - a fawning mock-interview of Mr. Hudak by broadcaster-turned-senator Mike Duffy, billed as "Inside the Leader's Studio" - seemed to be eaten up by delegates who weren't too hungover to be out of their hotel rooms on Sunday morning.
It was all intended to show that the Tories are finally moving into the 21st century. If less than subtle, it worked. They unveiled a new logo, a decent new slogan, "Ontario can lead again," and various social networking strategies. They generated news stories about Mr. Hudak becoming the first Canadian politician with an iPhone application. They even managed to spin a narrow by-election loss in Ottawa West-Nepean - a riding they'd have to win in a general election if they were on track to form government - into a positive.
Perhaps most encouraging for the Tories is who was behind the spiffy packaging.
It's been the better part of two decades since a new generation of Tory strategists ushered in Mr. Harris's Common Sense Revolution. But the Conservative backrooms have been an increasingly desolate place since then, and for a time it seemed likely that Mr. Hudak - a very young minister in Mr. Harris's governments - would just try to get the band back together.
Harris-era heavyweights such as Tom Long and Leslie Noble are certainly more engaged now than they were under John Tory, Mr. Hudak's predecessor. So is Deb Hutton, a former senior staffer for Mr. Harris who happens to be Mr. Hudak's wife. But it's a younger wave of Tories - led by Mark Spiro, who ran Mr. Hudak's leadership campaign - that will be shouldering the load in the next election.
Their fingerprints were all over the convention, including a slick election-readiness presentation that went beyond the usual incitements to riding-level activism. They were walking around like they owned the place, and the party's new-found professionalism suggests that's a good thing.
But they surely know that what they own remains a fixer-upper. And they've only just started the work.
Impressing card-carrying Conservatives was one thing. Appealing to the general electorate is another. And the weekend's centrepiece event, Mr. Hudak's keynote address, was a perfect mark of where they're at.
The presentation was flawless, including a high-adrenalin entrance to an Arcade Fire song. So was Mr. Hudak's delivery, other than his habit of occasionally smirking after applause lines.
It was the speech his audience wanted to hear, a rallying cry against the evils of the governing Liberals. But it didn't say much to the people for whom "McGuinty" is not an inherently bad word. Outside of platitudes about better health care and education, a more competitive business environment and greater accountability, Mr. Hudak made little effort to explain what he would do differently.
Nobody expected Mr. Hudak to unveil his platform this weekend, and he needn't do so for a while. But post-convention, he's past the point where it's enough to be better than John Tory; he now needs to be better than Dalton McGuinty.
It's going to be a tough slog on the policy front, because there's limited room for manoeuvring. With a big deficit, it's hard to promise tax cuts, which would be Mr. Hudak's preference. And if the Liberals veer rightward - which they have with the harmonized sales tax, and may again with some manner of privatization - it's hard for the Tories to oppose them without either seeming hypocritical or being pushed to the margins.
In terms of image construction, and his own performance, Mr. Hudak is further along the curve than most leaders less than a year in. But soon, the bright minds around him will need to shift their focus to policy. So begins the hard part.